"Finding God in All Things"

June 2, 2021

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011

Today is the 10th anniversary of Bonnie's death. I am among the many people who loved her and miss her kind and warm presence. She was an extremely generous woman and expressed her love as wife and mother,  daughter, grandmother and friend, in a way you could count on. 

More than a decade ago, when she was first diagnosed with leukemia, her husband Daniel Shurman told me that she was interested in doing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and asked if I could suggest a book that she could use. She did the Exercises and I was blessed to be her guide. But it was her enormous spiritual gift that allowed her truly embody the Teaching of Jesus, and then to share it with others, just as the Lord asks us.

During the years that her cancer remained in remission, she continued to explore the path that her Lord, through Ignatius, opened. She continued to live her life in prayer, exploring and digging further, following her own inspiration and gifts. This mystical bent was always balanced by the consummate professional, a scholar with common sense. 

She found a link between Ignatius and Julian of Norwich via an informal association of seekers who called themselves “the Friends of God.” She wrote about Julian, Ignatius and the Friends of God when she was studying at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is dated March 8, 2005. 

Thank you, Daniel for being the kind of husband who inspires, and for introducing me to Bonnie, To thank Bonnie for the gift of friendship, I am going to post the paper, “Finding God in All Things,” here.

We miss you, Bonnie. and your gentle presence. We are enormously grateful for the gifts you gave us. May you sing with the angels.

I have given this paper the same title as William Barry’s book: Finding God In All Things, A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius (Barry 1991). I was reading the book when Julian of Norwich was assigned in class. The similarities between Julian’s writings and Ignatius’s were striking to me. Both Julian and Ignatius write of multiple sensory experiences with God occasioned by life-threatening illness. Before I understood that Julian was born 150 years before Ignatius, I considered that her visions, like mine[1], might have been delirious manifestations engendered by Ignatian-style guided meditations. When I realized that she lived long before Ignatius, I abandoned the paper I was writing on the general topic of asceticism to delve deeper into parallels, coincidences, and possible connections between these two late medieval mystics.

The theological proposition of this paper is that the writings of Julian in circa 1400 and the writings of Ignatius circa 1525 are representative of a distinct spirituality: God as Friend. God as Friend is a paradigm shift from the dominant spirituality from the 4th century: Deity of Christ; it is distinct though related to two paradigms which were soon to emerge in the reformation: Salvation by Faith Alone and Incarnational Participation. At the end of this paper I will argue that the paradigm of God as Friend is finding new relevance in our time, hence bringing a renewed interest in both Julian and Ignatius.

In my search for a “social network” connecting Julian and Ignatius, I learned about an informal group called “Friends of God” from one of the many websites devoted to Julian. The name for this “association of pious persons, both ecclesiastical and lay [also men and women], alludes no doubt to John 15:14-15[2] … Friends of God appears to have had its origin in Basle between the years 1339 and 1343, and to have thence extended down the Rhine even as far as the Netherlands” (Walsh 1909). I am skeptical that Julian herself had any direct connection with the informal network of German mystics, but there is indirect evidence at least that many of them had access to her writing. One version of Julian’s Short Text (the so-called “Amherst Manuscript”) also contains writings of Friends’ mystics Marguerite Poerete, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruusbroec (Holloway 1997). The manuscript had been in the Brigittine Syon Abbey; it was owned by the Lowe family and through them found its way to the Low Countries and Rouen (Holloway 1996). While there is no direct evidence of who might have read it and when, there is enough indirect evidence to conclude that Julian’s ideas were circulating among German mystics following her death circa 1425. The German mystics influenced Ignatius through the Carhusian and former Dominican monk, Ludolf of Saxony (Gieraths 1986). Ignatius is known to have read and re-read a four volume Spanish translation of Ludolf’s Life of Christ and to have been profoundly influenced, even converted, by what he read there (Ignatius 2000, p. xiv; Loyola 2000, p. xiv).

The references to Julian’s writing in this paper come from a “Long Text” version translated from the manuscript found in the British Museum. As I read Revelations of Divine Love (Julian 2002), I noted about sixty passages expressing ideas similar to those found the Spiritual Exercises, far too many passages to discuss here.[3] I am concentrating on five concepts that point parallel notions of God as friend; in particular, I am limiting myself to the best examples that reveal similarities in their views of how people carry on friendship with God various media/modes. I use quotations from the work of each to document my argument that friendship with God is created and maintained through intimate communications which take at least five different forms: imagery, senses, colloquy, consolation/ desolation, and prayer. In the conclusion of the paper, I also point similarities in how they describe the nature of this friendship in their discussions of sin, love, goodness, choice, and the indwelling of God in our nature.

Communication is the sine qua non of any friendship. To have a concept of friendship with God, therefore requires that there be some form of media which constitutes that communication. For both Julian and Ignatius, imagery is the most important media and the Passion is the most important topic of that imagery. In examining Julian and Ignatius’s imagery of Jesus’ Passion, such in the illustrative passages below, it is easy to dismiss their perspective on friendship. After all “Body of Christ” imagery was a common theme of medieval piety yet friendship with God was not. I have little knowledge of other writers in the “Body of Christ” genre, so I cannot say that the friendship imagery of Julian and Ignatius is unique. What I observe in their imagery, however, is its intimacy. Both show intimacy with Jesus’ body; this use of imagery signals closeness, friendship.

… All the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefore, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ as it was shewed (Julian 2002, p.). 

… Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus hear me. Within Thy wounds hid me (Ignatius 2000, p. xlv).

Simply imagining another in a prayerful way can also create a close relationship with the one imagined with the need for conversation as we typically understand that term. A few months ago my husband and I were contacted by a friend to provide direction to on-line medical information for a friend of his with a rare bone marrow disease. We started to email with both Jim and his wife about Jim’s illness and potential resources in Palo Alto. Mostly we prayed intensely for Jim and also for his wife; we never spoke with them even by phone. When Jim died unexpectedly from a heart attack, both Daniel and I were devastated; we still cry at the thought of Jim. We had lost a dear friend, one whom we knew only through imagery, email, and prayer. It was a dramatic Julian-Ignatian lesson for me: I felt so close to this person and that closeness was entirely the product of my imagining his circumstances and my daily prayers for him. Knowing Jim in this way helped me to experience God in a fresh way; I learned how I can know God without human encounters just as I had known Jim without these encounters.

Imagery in Julian and Ignatius is not only visual, it is also multi-sensory.

I HAD, in part, touching, sight, and feeling in three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the Revelation standeth (Julian 2002, p. 197). And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come unto Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it (Julian 2002, p. 90). 

The Fifth contemplation will consist in applying the five senses to the matter. … seeing in imagination the persons, in contemplating and mediating in detail the circumstances in which they are… hear what they are saying… smell the infinite fragrance and taste the infinite sweetness of the divinity … touch, for example by embracing and kissing the place where the persons stand (Ignatius 2000, p. 45).

Communicating with one’s Godfriend goes beyond merely experiencing God through ones imagination and senses; both Julian and Ignatius converse directly with God. Throughout the Julian text, she is posing questions to God, and God is answering her, for example: “AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well…”(Julian 2002, p. 61); the result of this is conversational. Ignatius uses the term “colloquy” to refer to conversations with God (and also with Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit on occasions): “The colloquy is made by speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another” (Ignatius 2000, p. 24). These two examples exemplify a pattern of “shewing” vs “exercise” that I find over and over as a distinction between these two books: Julian shows her communication with God; Ignatius instructs the maker of the exercises to perform these same kinds of communications. Thus, “revelation” in Julian becomes “exercise” in Ignatius.

God has special kinds of communication with Julian that I would call, following Ignatius, “consolations” and “desolations.” In Ignatian spirituality, consolidations and desolations are the movements of the spirit—“internal movements” by which we can discern God’s will in our lives. Those making the exercises are taught how to listen or feel for these movements and thereby to guide their lives in accord with God’s will. Again, we see that Julian experiences these interior movements but makes no methodical use of them. Ignatius’s biography describes how he initially experienced them much as Julian did and then learned to put them to use in his own communications with God.

AND after this He shewed a sovereign ghostly pleasance in my soul. I was fulfilled with the everlasting sureness, mightily sustained without any painful dread. This feeling was so glad and so ghostly that I was in all peace and in rest, that there was nothing in earth that should have grieved me. …This lasted but a while, and I was turned and left to myself in heaviness, and weariness of my life that scarcely I could have patience to live. This Vision was shewed me, according to mine understanding, sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself (Julian 2002). 

God alone can give consolation to the soul without any previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it, to draw it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty (Ignatius 2000, p. 119 section 330). ...When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. For though God has taken from him the abundance of fervor and overflowing love and the intensity of His favors, nevertheless, he has sufficient grace for eternal salvation (Ignatius 2000, p. 116, section 320).

On the topic of prayer, Julian and Ignatius could not be more similar. Yet, it is not as simple to point to parallel passages as with the preceding topics. For them, prayer is not just a “doing” – not just a message we send to God, in the form of a petition, for example. Rather, prayer is a way of being in which ones very foundation, ones “ground” is God and therefore prayer is fitting ourselves to that Ground of our being. Julian puts it this way:

OUR Lord God willeth that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer. The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springeth. By whom, He sheweth when He saith: I am [the] Ground; and how, by His Goodness: for He saith first: It is my will. The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer; and that is that our will be turned unto the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so meaneth He when He saith: I make thee to will it. The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers: that is, that we be oned and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson shewed. And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He saith Himself; Blessed may He be! For this is our Lord’s will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large. For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self (Julian 2002).

“Grounded in God” has several implications. First, that prayer is about the will of God and our place in that will. From this the next implication, only implicit in the statement above, that God is eternally present and has already “answered” our prayers in our very existence, our salvation, and in all that we enjoy: “The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He hath made beneath us, [He hath made] to serve us, and for our love keepeth it. Then signifieth He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before thy prayers; and now thou art, and prayest me” (Julian 2002). Julian cautions us not to go looking for this or that way that God might have answered our small petitions, but to understand that God is answering even the prayers we have not yet asked. So how then should we pray? We should pray that “our will be turned unto the will of our Lord.” The true end of our petitions is that we become like God, indeed that we are at one with God.

William Barry describes the same understanding in Ignatius in his chapter entitled, “Grounded in God: The Principle and Foundation” (Ignatius 2000, pp. 33ff.). God is up to one action; we can experience the creative action of God which is always at work (Barry 1991, p. 39); Ignatius draws out the implications of our place in God’s one action in the Principle and Foundation: “We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things… Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a short life. … Our one desire and choice should be what is conductive to the end for which we are created (Ignatius 2000, p. 12, section 23). In other words, it is about God’s will; our prayer is our participation in that will. We are engaged in the world of God’s creating and God is already answering the prayers we have not yet made.

We have seen in both of these late medieval mystics a central concern with our relationship with God and how that relationship is continuously created through various media. The relationship is one of love. While both mystics write extensively on sin, theirs is not the sin of the medieval church or of Jonathan Edwards. Indeed, Julian comes as close as one might in her day to saying that her Church is misguided in its notion of sin and salvation (Julian 2002, p. 104). Ignatius’ first week of the Exercises is devoted to examining one’s sin, but the point is not to berate or belittle the maker of the Exercises. Rather, the grace of the first week is the experience of love. “Ignatius expects that God will reveal our sins in such a way that we will actually be consoled. We are to have an increase of faith, hope, and love, be moved to tears of sorrow for our sin, but also to tears of love for a God who has been so good to us” (Barry 1991, p. 51). The heart of the message from both Julian and Ignatius is the goodness of God, the love of God, and the freedom which God gives us in the hope that we will choose to put God at the center of our lives, and participate in God’s mission.

Both mystics are saying that we must look in the world and in ourselves to find God. Their piety is finding God in all things, starting with finding ourselves IN God. “For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned” (Julian 2002, p. 133). This is such a contemporary message; it is not surprising that both mystics are being read more in our time than in any time of the past, including their own.

I have argued here that both Julian and Ignatius provide us with kataphatic paths to relationship with God as friend, one in which we are constantly called to God’s mission, but never coerced or threatened. We are called to examine our own sins, not the sins of others; we communicate with God who already God loves us and forgives us already. This is a contemporary theme. These are mystics for our time.

Notes:

1 Since this is not a “personal reflection paper,” I will not discuss further my own experiences. Suffice to say that the parallels I find in Julian’s writings to my own experiences were the motivation for my choosing this topic.

2 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father.”

3 References to “Pages” in Julian are to the original manuscript pages; references to Ignatius are to pages in the Vintage-Random House version with section numbers referring to Ignatius original sections.

References

Barry, W. A. (1991). Finding God In All Things A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius. Notre Dame, IL, Ave Maria Press.

Gieraths, G. M. (1986). "Life in Abundance: Meister Eckhart and the German Dominican Mystics of the 14th Century." Spirituality Today 38 (August): Supplementary Book.

Holloway, J. B. (1996) The Westminster Cathedral/Abbey Manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love. http://www.umilta.net/westmins.html.

Holloway, J. B. (1997) Godfriends: The Continental Medieval Mystics. http://www.umilta.net/godfrien.html.

Ignatius (2000). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. New York, Random House.

Julian (2002). Revelations of Divine Love. Grand Rapids, MI, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Walsh, R. (1909). Friends of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online Edition, K. Knight. 6.

An Afternoon with Chiura Obata and generations of Amish mystics

Originally posted May 6th, 2010

Yesterday I ran into an old friend, Chiura Obata—even though I never met him, I feel that I know him through his work—and I stumbled into the works of some extraordinary Amish women and girls who made useful, and astonishing, household goods to keep themselves and their families warm. I am going to try to describe an experience that opened my eyes to the world in a way that I didn’t expect.

In the late afternoon, I headed to free Tuesdays at the De Young in Golden Gate Park. I had just intended to distract myself, to drift around and see what was up that I haven’t seen recently. Sometimes I direct myself around a museum as if I were my own docent, and sometimes, I just stand in awe. Both these persons were present; I hope you can distinguish their voices.

I walked up the wide stairs at the south end of the building and headed straight back towards the fabric gallery where 48 Amish quilts made between 1880 and 1940 were on display. I was curious. Of course I’ve seen the coffee table books that portray these artifacts as folksy Americana, women’s craftwork, unique and colorful.

Attendant 5, Bryce Marden

One look at the real work destroyed my folksy preconceptions forever. Escher’s disoriented perspective where front and back trade places are essential components without caricatured beetles crawling over them. Georgia O’Keefe’s sensuous lines are stitched in patterns across solid blocks of color. Keith Haring’s strictly drawn, geometrically arranged figures lay flat until the lines start to dance. Then the patchwork itself dances.

These women understood geometric shapes and what happens as the background changes color decades before Josef Albers began his investigations. Jasper Johns had artistic grandmothers, dozens, maybe hundreds. Bryce Marden’s simple elegant repeated loops create the same visual magic that these women did as they set circles on the rectangular fabrics that protected their sleeping children.

Was it the practice of keeping it simple, or community, or cooperation that laid the foundation for what I saw, or is there a magic elixir in the water in Amish country? These artists, women and girls, were absolute masters of every discipline they used, design, color, geometry, and sewing. 

I walked around stunned. I lost track of time. These visionaries and mystics took whatever was at hand, used the careful, precise skills handed down to them by their mothers and created masterpieces. I wondered if they saw their work as being astonishing in the way that I saw it. Actually I suspect that they did, but it was also ordinary fare in their communities.

I will not do these artifacts a disservice by pasting up a catalogue of Internet images, no matter how beautiful, precise or detailed. One will have to give a taste. I have shown a "Shadow Pattern" design. When you see them, be in their presence, you can almost feel the hands and eyes and souls of these extraordinary, mostly anonymous artists.

Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley

The fabric gallery and the wall where Chiura Obata’s Lake Basin in the High Sierra hangs are only a few yards apart. I have been a fan of the Issei Japanese American Obata (1885-1975) since I saw his hanging scroll, Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley, during the closing exhibit at the old De Young back in 2000.

How Lake Basin became a koan that unlocked something inside me may sound disjointed—moving from quilts to a painting on silk—but it didn’t feel that way to me at all. It seemed as natural as stepping into a bath.

Koan is the Japanese word for a particular type of story telling used by old Chinese and Japanese Zen meditation teachers to help a student unlock and experience some aspect of the Buddha's teaching—and make it their own. Sometimes they contain what might be more appropriately called riddles or puzzles, but these are not just linguistic or conceptual. They hold much more than what meets the eye.

I had briefly glanced at Lake Basin before I went into the quilt exhibit. When I finally began my leave taking of the quilts with a promise to visit again before they returned to the care of Faith and Steven Brown, I walked back through the gallery's dark narrow passageway, turned right and stopped in front of Obata’s subtle brushwork. Now, the colors and shapes stopped me.

I had just spent perhaps an hour looking at colors and shapes on flat surfaces with no pretense of perspective, yet with incredible depth and dimension. When my eyes took in Obata’s floating blue lake holding up a mountain of ragged black covered with half melted snow, there it was again, the same one-dimensional quality. Lake Basin was born out of an ancient Chinese scroll that spread pieces of craggy cliffs and trees in brushwork up and down the page with trees and scholars sketched in to create an illusion of depth. Actually, when I study old Chinese scrolls, the small miniature roofs seem to act like footnotes—the painter wants to tell you, “See, that one, it’s in the distance.” But Obata didn’t import Buddhist pagodas to the High Sierra. He painted an American landscape as he found it: water, rock and sky, big and bold. But he also painted with great delicacy and restraint. It is almost reverential.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra

I sat down on the bench that was right there, waiting for the moment. My eyes moved across the surfaces. The lake floated in blue lapis lazuli pigment, completely still except where the tracings of bristle allowed me look down to the lake’s bottom. The sides of its bowl were decorated with green and yellow, new growth. On top, neither behind nor in front, the patched snow softened the dark granite’s sharp edges. The snow seemed to wrap under the mountain's weight and hold it in space; the stylized vertical marks could just as easily have been on the blanket wrapped under a child, stitched in by an Amish craftswoman teaching her daughter to sew.

I sat until the guards began to warn that they would soon close the doors. As I got up I realized that I had been sitting with a visual koan. I say koan because the play of lines and color across the silk revealed that winter holds spring, not in a temporal or sequential way, but as a mother holds her child. I was overwhelmed by the tenderness of Nature. The feeling startled me. It was sudden.

At times in the past, I have held snow on the granite peaks as inhospitable, as terrifying as the tales of Donner Pass, but now another deep understanding was also there, the High Sierra was the Source of the clear bright water that crashes over rocks in Spring making its way towards the Bay. Both points of view are equally true; one does not negate the other. But once I was able to creep inside Obata’s vertical and horizontal lines, his blues and blacks, whites and greens, I found a way to enter the wildness of nature as a friend, with no fear. I don’t know if this understanding will last, but I do know that it was not present before yesterday just as the museum was closing.

The one harsh line I could not cross on Lake Basin is where the mountain touches the sky. I am here on the earth. Both koans and paintings are the works of men, not gods. Words and colors, brushes and pencils, silk and pigments, thoughts and meditation, discourse and dreaming, these are all around us. They are both tools and the stuff we work with.



I am going to conclude with thoughts about humans crafting koans out of their experience, dreams, insight, study and the patient work of meditation. As you scroll down, you will see some of the images that I studied on the Internet. Obata was a professional artist. He painted so he could feed and clothe his wife and children. He did several versions of Lake Basin the High Sierra, a sketch, smaller paintings and wood block prints. I can’t determine the time line for certain. Art curators date the wood blocks and paintings sometime around 1930. The colored pencil sketch is clearly dated 1930. But when I examined the images of each of the works that were available, I am sure that he started the large painting that I'd sat in front of—it is nearly 6' high and 10' feet across—only after he himself had explored the shapes, colors and lines and allowed them to find their own way onto the silk. Perhaps he had a similar friendship with the wild, and felt that same tenderness I experienced Tuesday. I wondered if he kept coming back to his images in the same way that a koan grabs my mind and imagination, becoming more essential with each pass. Perhaps he and his pigment and mineral, brushes and silk shared their experience with me. No, certainly, they did.

Here are some images of the various renditions presented without further comment.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra, sketch, 1930


Lake Basin in the High Sierra, watercolor


Lake Basin in the High Sierra, Tadeo Takamizawa (Printer) color woodcut on paper image: 

11 3/8 x 15 5/8 in. (28.9 x 39.7 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum

These are the pieces of art that I have quoted in post:

Print, Quilt Sale, unknown
Attendant 5, Bryce Marden
Amish Shadow Quilt, Alternate pattern name: Shadows. Maker unknown. Date Unknown. 67" x 63." Nebraska State Historical Society
Setting Sun: Sacramento Valley, CA. 1925. Hanging scroll: mineral pigments (distemper) and gold on silk, 107 1/2 x 69 in.
Lake Basin in the High Sierra, Chiura Obata, cc 1930, painting on silk (69 ½ x 102 ½ inches), made with ink and a brilliant blue lapis lazuli pigment. De Young Museum, San Francisco
Chiura Obata, photograph, UC Berkeley

Some Great words from A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

“Don't Read Success Stories You will get only message. Read failure stories. You will get some ideas to get success.”

When I read this quote of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, it struck me in a very deep way. Besides being really true, it's a corrective to my habitual half-hearted attempts at a Norman Vincent Peale type of positive thinking as well as some of my reading habits.

When I did some research, I discovered a man who had as much a way with words as he did with applying both the scientific method as well as his Muslim faith to living a full and productive life.

Times of India Photo

I’ve assembled a collection of his quotes. I dedicate this to my young Muslim friends, Aqib and Mustafa, because they inspire me, and I am very grateful for their friendship. They are both young and starting out, so I will begin with this quote:

"Sometimes, it is better to bunk a class and enjoy with friends, because now, when I look back, marks never make me laugh, but memories do." 

"For a great man religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool."

"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping; it is something that does not let you sleep." 

"Dream, dream, dream. Dreams transform into thoughts and thoughts result in action."

"Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action converts adversity into prosperity."

"Education gives you wings to fly. Achievement comes out of fire in our subconscious mind that ‘I will win."

“Failure will never overtake me if my definition to succeed is strong enough”.

"The world today is integrally connected through four rapid connectivities. They are the environment, people, economy, and ideas."

"A Leader must have a 'Vision' for an organisation, 'Passion' to work for achieving the goals, 'Curiosity' to travel an unexplored path and ‘Courage' to take decisions."

"When you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise; discharge your trust... Withhold your hands from striking, and from taking that which is unlawful and bad."

"It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone."

“Don’t take rest after your first victory because if you fail in the second, more lips are waiting to say that your first victory was just luck.”

“If you fail, never give up because FAIL means "First Attempt in Learning".

“If you want to shine like a sun, first, burn like the sun."

"All of us do not have equal talent. But, all of us have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."

"All Birds find shelter during the rain. But Eagle avoids rain by flying above the Clouds.”

“Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.”

“Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?”

 

What would Bapuji be Doing?

Originally posted on 23 April 2020. Today, June 2, 2021, we are still in state of lockdown here in India; I have revised and reposted it.

On Tuesday, 13 April 2021, I fasted. It was 397 days since the first Coronavirus Virus lockdown in India. It was also the first day of Ramadan. I am not Muslim, or even particularly religious, but I’d been asking myself what would Bapuji be doing during this pandemic, and my answer was very clear: he'd be fasting. 

Since the founding of their Republic, Indians have faced many challenges. Being true to the principles that created the largest democracy on the face of the earth, each generation has to reformulate an answer in the language and the circumstances of the present moment to this question: what would Bapuji do? This question is more than lip-service to the man whose compassion and courage inspire us. It is more than just a sound bite on the TV news to gain some political advantage. When facing the silent enemy of the Coronavirus, a life and death situation, our answer might determine whether we live or die. 

The threat of death and the economic destruction brought on by the virus is very different from the occupation of the British Raj. There is no enemy we can point to, no foreign army, no terrorist, no General Dyer, and also no malicious government conspiracy or incompetence. The victims of this virus are not defined by the language they speak, nor the clothes they wear, the clubs where they hang out, nor the religion they practice. The virus does not obey human laws or ordinary conventions. It is a force of nature.

And the threat is very grave. Many people are dying in the second wave. Crops are not harvested. Shops are closed again. Temples, mosques, shrines, churches, and gurudwaras, all are empty. The hospitals are turning sick people away because all the beds are taken. Doctors and nurses are being overworked, getting sick themselves and dying because they are caring for huge numbers of patients. But most Indians, some more willing than others, are following the advice of our leaders and health professionals and staying home, reducing the rate of infection.

But this comes at an enormous cost. Nerves are frayed. Families confined at home are seeing both the love that brought them together as well as the negative traits that they would normally tolerate. And yet, we have to do what we can because our survival depends on it. 

Of course it is far too early to begin to draw any lessons from this experience. But certain things are clear, and I think we should keep them in mind because we cannot really know how long this situation will last.

First we are all in this together. The virus does not discriminate between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, or secularist. Our only defense is a united front. We will only succeed if we work together. We number about 135 crores and share a relatively small section of the earth’s surface. This is a difficult situation even under the best of circumstances.

Second, we have faced other crises in the past, and we have prevailed. People know how to work together facing impossible situations. We've realized that any struggle is hard work, but there is no way to avoid the pain that our human life presents us.

Third, Coronavirus is stealthy. It hides. In war, soldiers wear uniforms so that they know who they are fighting with and who are the enemies. The virus has robbed us of that luxury. It has no memory of past injustices. It does not hold grudges. It does not discriminate. To those who might say that the virus itself is God’s punishment for evil, I would just beg for humility in the face of calamity. Which one of us really knows the mind of God? It is perfectly understandable to try to blame someone else when facing an overwhelming fear. It is an instinctive reaction to lash out, and we think it helps. But the virus does not share our prejudices.

And fourth, there will be pain, and suffering, and loss. These are the facts of our lives now. There is no way to avoid it. 

When I first learned about Bapuji’s fasting, I was puzzled. It seems obvious that the way to fight an enemy is to use all the strength and power at our command. I thought he inflicted pain on himself to motivate others, perhaps even through guilt, to come to his way of thinking or unite against the British.

But perhaps it was the only thing he could do. There was no other defense. There was no power that he had to defeat the oppressor other than his inner strength. He nourished his soul by depriving his body. It was also his way of standing up to the suffering of life, accepting it willingly. 

I feel helpless in the face of the epidemic. I remain confident that the situation will improve, but I cannot predict when or how. In the meantime, I will do my best, and I will try to overcome my prejudice and work with everyone to defeat our faceless enemy. And I will fast.

Ken Ireland with Ankit Deshwal